• GREED, LUST, ENTITLEMENT, VANITY & FEAR

    GREED, LUST, ENTITLEMENT, VANITY & FEAR Because my husband and I watch a lot of television, we are forced to watch a lot of commercials. Even though most of the time we remember to mute the sound, the pictures shout out to us, loud and clear. We started a little experiment the other night. We

  • LOST IN SPACE

    LOST IN SPACE No, I’m not talking about the television show. I’m talking about my own tendency to lose everything I touch. My husband and I laugh together about my “visio-spatial impairment”. He thinks it’s cute – thank God. I laugh because, if I didn’t, I’d cry. It came to mind this morning because my

  • SUNSHINE

    SUNSHINE We’ve been enduring five days of non-stop rain here in Southern California. Some communities were flooded. There was a huge landslide yesterday in a tiny town near the ocean just south of Santa Barbara. There were several fatalities and people are still missing in the rubble. A house not too far from us in

  • SINGING IN THE STUDIO

    SINGING IN THE STUDIO Today I’m going to be singing in the studio. (That is, God willin’ and the crik don’t rise). It’s been raining relentlessly for about three days, and there’s a leak in the vocal booth, so I guess as long as I don’t stand in a puddle and touch the microphone at

  • WHAT EVIL LURKS?

    WHAT EVIL LURKS? So, I’m making the bed this morning, just like I do every morning, and of course, I have the television on because (as we all know) I’m a television junkie. I’m not even paying attention to the movie that’s on, when a commercial cuts in. It’s a commercial for a “thriller” –

  • ATONEMENT IN JANUARY

    ATONEMENT IN JANUARY In the Jewish faith, we have a Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). It is celebrated in September some time. I always have a hard time scraping up enough sins in the early autumn to make for a meaningful experience. I think we ought to move Yom Kippur to January and make it

  • FEAR ITSELF

    FEAR ITSELF Yesterday I was talking about “just in case” scenarios and how we spend so much of our time and energy (and money) preparing for the worst. Then I remembered another one. A couple of weeks ago, Art and I bought a car. We had done our “due diligence”, reading up on the various

  • JUST IN CASE

    JUST IN CASE Well, it’s come again. I can’t avoid it anymore. It’s the yearly clean up. This is the beginning of a process wherein I gather up all the papers from the past year, file them away in big cardboard boxes with labels like, “Bank Statements, 2004”, “Business Receipts, 2004”, etc., and then stack

  • CREATURES OF HABIT

    CREATURES OF HABIT This is one of those days that make you want to sleep. We are receiving our third drenching in a week. When I woke up, the rain was coming down hard and fast, and the skies were heavy with charcoal gray clouds. There was a chill in the morning air that made

  • HAPPY NEW YEAR!

    HAPPY NEW YEAR! One last day for 2004. (Perhaps for some of you reading this, it is already 2005)! Here in Southern California, the Good Lord has chosen to force us into a day of contemplation. The rain is coming down fast and furious, and as you probably know by now, Angelinos do not travel